Retirement claims take a dip in November, OPM says

Workforce

Retirement claims take a dip in November, OPM says

After receiving 4,000 more retirement claims in October than it expected to, the Office of Personnel Management received 2,000 fewer than it expect to in the month...

Michael O'Connell@moconnellWFED

December 5, 2014 3:06 pm

2 min read

The number of federal employees filing retirement claims took a dip during the month of November, according to newly released figures from the Office of Personnel Management.

OPM received just 5,746 claims in November, which is nearly 2,000 fewer claims than the 7,600 it expected to receive. In addition, the number of claims OPM processed — 5,844 — was nearly 2,000 fewer than the 7,800 it planned to process for the month.

With fewer claims received and processed, OPM whittled down its unprocessed claims inventory from 14,137 at the end of October to 14,039 at the end of November, a difference of just 98.

The November numbers are in sharp contrast to those posted at the end of October, when OPM reported that it had received 10,155 new retirement claims for that month. That’s about 4,000 more claims than OPM received in November. The number of claims OPM processed in October was higher too, at 8,785.

OPM has been tracking and reporting on progress toward cutting the retirement backlog since January 2012. At the time, the backlog topped out at more than 60,000 claims and OPM was the subject of congressional criticism and federal employee frustration.

In May, OPM started reporting the percentage of claims it processed within 60 days. In the seven months so far reported, the percentage has steadly inched upward from 76.6 percent in May, around 77 percent in June and July, to 78.5 percent in August, to 78.8 percent in September, 83.2 percent in October and 83.4 percent in November.

Looking ahead to numbers for December, OPM expects to receive 5,600 claims and projects it will process 6,500.

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